Gag comics can be both pretty nasty and wonderful. Gags in Perry Bible Fellowship managed to deliver deep ideas in such intelligent and concise way, which I think is perfect for contemporary audience who have fairly short attention and spend a lot of time on the internet. This time I want to bring up an interesting phenomena from Thai’s web comic culture as there are several aspects that parallel to The Perry Bible Fellowship.
In the last 10-15 years Thailand has suffered from heavy political turmoils and many kinds of societal problems. After the stage of full awareness of these issues, Thais started to get really tired and bored of them. The rise of social media such as Facebook aspired artists and people who make art to publish satire arts and comics that reflect the current state of the society. This is not only a relief but an expression of intelligence pity toward the darker side of thai society and over dramatized medias. Just like Perry Bible Fellowship, webcomic in this genre reflects the irony of behavior and mind that is common in the present world we live in.
However, webcomic in Thailand has an interesting characteristic that has been determined by a unique social class structure that make it distinct from American webcomic. Almost all of Thai webcomic are exhibited on there individual Facebook page as if each artist is a the center of their own sub-culture. Most of them were inspired by manga style as well as most Thai young artists. Facebook also helped them connected and inspired each others. Each artists and their works strongly represents their lifestyle, worldview and their places in the social hierarchy.
These are some EXAMPLES.
These artists
for example strongly represents the lower middle class and blue-collar which the standard of living and lifestyle has been affected by all societal and political problem. Their perception of values are highly sensitive to these issues and could get quite hideous at a time and this artist do not hesitate to present that hideousness directly and truthfully.
These artists
are more toward mid-middle class which gravitated less around behavioral issues and more political, economical struggle and clash between old and new traditions.
Some artists that strongly represents mid-middle class are heavily centered around pop culture and work/romance life.
And then there are artists who represents the ‘new wave’ of our culture which are elaborate and more concern about the new artistic tradition.
These webcomic/web-artists culture is a sign of new paradigm of Thai culture where a long deeply divided classes started to dramatically dissolved. The internet became an accepted place for expression of ideas and self in the society where art and ideas beyond elite has been highly suppressed. The drastic change has been triggered and tend to become more powerful as it continues. In the next few years when we get over our current struggle we might be able to see a new image of Thai culture and traditions.
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